Kyle and Jackie O’s disastrous interview with Russell Crowe

Kyle and Jackie O have revealed how they offended Russell Crowe with a gift when they interviewed him for the first time.

Kyle and Jackie O have opened up about their disastrous radio interview with Russell Crowe.

On air today, the KIIS FM hosts recalled what happened when they met Crowe face-to-face for the first time when they were hosting the Hot30 in the early 2000s.

“We went to his hotel to interview him,” Jackie O said. “We were pretty young and impressionable. We thought, ‘What can we do to get Russell on side and have a great interview with him?’”

Kyle and Jackie O started hosting the Hot30 together in 2000.

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At the time Crowe was fresh off his Oscar win for Gladiator and had a reputation of being prickly in interviews, so Kyle came up with a plan to get on his good side instantly.

“You said, ‘We’ll take him a carton of beer and a carton of cigarettes and give it to him as a gift’,” Jackie O reminisced to Kyle.

But the gift went down like a lead balloon.

“It was a disaster,” Kyle recalled.

“He was offended! He said, ‘Is this what you think I’m like, is it? Is this all there is to me?’” Jackie O said.

The radio hosts were left flustered by Crowe’s reaction to the gift, and things only got worse when the chat began.

“We started the interview … and he goes, ‘Have we started yet?’” Jackie O said. “And we’re like, ‘Yeah’, and we kept going on and again he said, ‘Sorry, have we started? This is the interview, is it?’”

“It was so bad,” Kyle exclaimed.

Russell Crowe won an Oscar in 2001 for Gladiator.

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Despite getting off to a disastrous start, the interview gradually improved as the actor loosened up, and he even invited Kyle and Jackie O to stick around afterwards.

“By the end of the interview, he goes, ‘Let’s crack open the beers and all hang out together’,” Jackie said.

“We stayed there so late, chain-smoking and skolling beer, and I don’t even drink,” Kyle recalled. “I was legless. Then we had to get a cab back to the radio show and we went on air live blind drunk. I was rat-a**ed.”

The radio hosts now consider Crowe a friend, with Kyle saying this morning, “He’s the greatest bloke.”

Kyle Sandilands pictured arriving in Los Angeles in November 2019 after announcing his breakup with long term girlfriend Imogen Anthony. Picture: GRH/Backgrid

Kyle and Jackie O’s story comes just a few months after Crowe made headlines for bailing on a scheduled radio interview with WSFM’s Jonesy and Amanda.

Crowe was set to chat to the radio hosts to promote his TV series The Loudest Voice but pulled the pin when they wouldn’t cater to his last-minute request.

“He’s cancelled. I’ll tell you why – he’d only come on to talk about (The Loudest Voice) if we’d play his song,” Keller revealed on air.

“When’s this become a thing? Is that a thing now? I didn’t even know he had a new song,” Jonesy said.

Jonesy and Amanda won the Best On-Air Team (FM) at the recent radio awards. Picture: Liam Kidston

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“He wanted us to play it – I didn’t want to play it,” Amanda said before playing a brief snippet of the track by Crowe’s band Indoor Garden Party.

“We said we wouldn’t be blackmailed this way. (The songs are) fine, but we didn’t want to be blackmailed this way. He went on Fitzy and Wippa – they agreed to play his song! Why would you?” she asked.

“No wonder they rate less than us,” Jonesy quipped.